Inquisition (28 page)

‘Did he use the word “urgently”?’

The friar nodded. ‘He is already sitting at your desk going through all the trial papers to make certain there are no irregularities.’

Uberto da Rimini had never sworn in his life and didn’t even do it now. But he had to exercise every ounce of self-control not to ask God why He insisted on frustrating every effort he made. Less than an hour would have been enough to get a confession out of the bogus student,but he didn’t dare go any further now. The most important thing was to maintain secrecy; he wouldn’t even mention the arrest to friar Antonio. God willing, he could come back the next day and go on with the interrogation.

‘As you heard, a matter of great urgency requires me to return to the monastery,’ he said to the Captain of the People, who had been speaking to the paper-maker in a hushed voice. ‘I would ask that the interrogation be stopped and continued only in my presence, in the name of the collaboration that unites us in this cause.’

‘Agreed,’ replied the
Podestà
, coming up from behind him.

‘But we will only wait until noon tomorrow. Then we will proceed with or without you.’ He turned back towards the interrogation room, where the notary and the executioner had remained, and shouted, ‘Untie the prisoner and take him back to his cell. We’ll carry on tomorrow.’

Uberto made him a brief bow and hurried away, preceded by the friar.

‘There’s one more thing,’ said the young Dominican, quietly. They had left the
comune
and were navigating their way through the confusion of shops that filled most of the space beneath the huge arches, leaving only the narrowest gaps for people and handcarts to pass. ‘I didn’t want to mention it in front of strangers.’ ‘What is it?’

‘The ex-priest, Guido Arlotti. He came looking for you at the monastery, saying that he had some important news. He was covered in bruises and his clothes were ripped. Since you weren’t there, he went home to change and deal with his injuries, but he said he’d be back later.’

Uberto nodded, with a sigh. Too many things all at the same time. He had to take a moment to think clearly and decide on his plan of campaign. But to do that he had to be free of constraints. He only hoped that the Archbishop would go back to where he’d come from as soon as possible.

The trip to the port of Corticella was straightforward and enjoyable. They followed the bank of the Navile by land, surrounded by the shouts of the muleteers urging on the mules pulling the barges and the whistles of the boatmen telling each other to watch out when they passed each other. All that coming and going was in itself protection enough from Guido Arlotti and his henchmen if they had been thinking of getting their own back. But Adia doubted whether they would feel like trying anything in their current sorry state, and Mondino agreed with her.

They walked along in line: first the donkey, weighed down with bags held in strong cord nets. Then Adia and Mondino, who took turns in spurring the donkey with a slap on his rear when he came to a halt, and then the dogs constantly running back and forth, panting with their tongues hanging out, but aware of every movement around them.

They were still talking about the death of the German templar and Adia asked if the corpse had by chance had the mark of a wound like that of an awl in the chest.

Mondino looked at her with a combination of amazement and suspicion. ‘How did you know that?’

While general information about the state of the corpse was by now in the public domain, that particular had not leaked out. In fact, Mondino might have been the only one to have noticed it, and only because Angelo da Piczano had an identical wound.

Adia smiled enigmatically. ‘Thanks to my sorceress’s gifts, naturally. Didn’t the people who told you about me say that I can also read the past and the future?’

‘Don’t joke, please, just answer my question.’ Adia smacked her hand against the donkey’s rump, clicking her tongue at the same time, and the animal, which had stopped for a second to stare at the canal, obediently walked on.

‘It’s only a guess, Messer physician,’ she said, with a twinkle in her eye. ‘If that man was killed with a powder that transforms blood into iron, it’s unlikely that he drank it dissolved in a liquid, don’t you think?’

‘I’ve already thought of that,’ said Mondino. ‘If it did, all the blood vessels in the poison’s passage would be transformed into metal too. Whereas the transmutation only took place in the heart and surrounding veins.’

This was the question that most flummoxed him from a scientific point of view. And the one that he hadn’t known how to answer when Gerardo and Hugues de Narbonne had put it to him.

‘That means,’ continued Adia, ‘That the poison, as you call it, was injected directly into the heart. Through a hollow stiletto or something similar.’

‘But such an instrument doesn’t exist!’ exclaimed Mondino.

‘I keep myself up to date with the most modern scientific discoveries and I’ve never heard of a thin, hollow blade that is strong enough to puncture the heart of a man without bending.’

A costermonger came out of a turning to their left, pulling a cart heavy with vegetables. His dog, a great big half-breed with drooping ears, started snarling and barking at the two Molossers and Mondino was afraid that a dogfight would break out. Adia issued a brief command in Arabic and the mastiffs stood stock still on the verge, without showing the slightest animosity towards the costermonger’s dog, which went on snarling and drooling, but didn’t come any closer. The man, having yelled at his hound without response, dropped the handlebars of his cart and went to give the dog a decent kick up the road. As they walked on, Mondino noticed that he made a superstitious sign to ward off evil with his left hand.

‘People hereabouts believe that my dogs are possessed by the Devil because they behave in a reasonable manner,’ Adia commented, with a shrug of her shoulders.

‘Their obedience to your commands surprised me too,’ replied Mondino.

‘In my country the training of dogs, horses and falcons is an age-old tradition,’ she said. ‘My people discovered centuries ago that to make yourself obeyed you need to use gentleness rather than violence.’

Mondino stopped himself from making a stinging comment about the muslims who infested the Holy land, and their remorseless manner of fighting. They used anything but gentleness.

‘You were talking about the instrument,’ he said instead, going back to the subject he had most at heart.

‘There’s nothing more to be said,’ answered Adia, her mood suddenly darker. The peasant’s sign to ward off evil must have hurt her more than she liked to admit. ‘A thing doesn’t exist until someone finds a need for it. When there’s a need, sooner or later, it will be invented.’

Mondino reflected a moment and thought to himself that she might be right. No physician had ever needed to inject medicine directly into the blood, but the idea was fascinating. Certainly, in that way the medicine would have a much faster effect. But again, to be able to do that, you would have to clarify exactly how the circulation of the blood functioned. That took him back to all his current problems and reduced him to silence too.

They went on a fair distance without speaking, and only when they were in sight of Corticella, a small but very lively and noisy hamlet, did they renew their conversation. Mondino wanted to take the first barge to Bologna, but he felt a strange reluctance at saying goodbye to the woman with the amber skin and the throaty voice. And not even the thought of the Inquisitor and his ultimatum stopped Mondino from accompanying Adia to the friends with whom she was staying.

The port was congested with boats of every type, from basic punts, which moved with agility even in very shallow waters and were used to transport small merchandise about, to the more imposing merchant ships with trapezoid sails that navigated the wide Po river, as well as the open sea. Mondino was fascinated by the spectacle of the boats and the haggling that was going on practically everywhere: on the embankment, on improvised benches dotted around, and in the few stone-built shops that had grown up around the port. One of the shops attracted his attention because it had its own little harbour and the smaller boats, passing under a high arch, could sail straight into the building to unload their goods. The sight made him think of the descriptions he had heard of life in Venice, and suddenly, perhaps because of his closeness to all the boats, he was seized by a longing to travel, to see new places and not to limit his life to one city.

Adia seemed to know a lot about the boats and sails and as they walked she explained their various functions. Mondino asked if she had travelled much and she replied that she could talk for hours about all the places she’d been to.

They finally arrived at the inn she was heading for, a building that seemed too big for the hamlet, with a tavern on the ground floor and several bedrooms on the two upper storeys. The innkeeper made a great fuss of Adia, telling her that she could stay for as long as she wanted, and he wouldn’t hear of payment.

‘I healed his daughter of a nasty form of herpes pox,’ explained Adia, while she settled the animals in the courtyard behind the house.

‘What did you give her?’ asked Mondino, curious.

‘Elder leaves, in a decoction and compresses. But if I’m honest,’ she added with a smile, ‘I had the impression that the illness went away of its own accord, once it had run its course.’

When they had both freshened up, Adia in her room and Mondino at the well in the courtyard, she suggested they ate together before he went on his way.

‘With all the excitement that followed your arrival at my house, I have only just remembered that I haven’t eaten yet. And they serve a delicious rabbit in wine here,’ she said.

Mondino accepted immediately, showing an enthusiasm that was perhaps more than the circumstances called for, and they went into the tavern. It was full of people. The innkeeper said that there were no free tables just then and asked if they’d mind eating in a room upstairs, assuring them that the food would be brought as soon as possible. Mondino realised that the man had mistaken them for a couple and began to protest, but Adia pulled his sleeve and signalled to him to be quiet.

As they walked upstairs, she explained: ‘He’s too nice to say so, but many people here recognise me and he doesn’t want his customers to be uncomfortable, seeing a witch in the room.’

They ate their meal in a small private room adjoining Adia’s bedroom, decorated with a low table and two small sofas upholstered in red velvet. In fact, given the late hour, they were nearer the evening than the midday meal, and the sun, already in its descent towards the horizon in the direction of Modena, lit the room with a warm reddish light.

While they ate the rabbit, dipping pieces of bread in the sauce and drinking a fresh and deceptively light Trebbiano, they carried on talking of alchemy and Adia told him about all the places that her thirst for knowledge had taken her. She had been to Greece, where she’d seen the ruins of the Parthenon and the rock of Athens. Then she’d travelled to Sicily, from where she had sailed to Barcelona and continued on foot to the Basilica of Santiago di Compostela, and from there she had crossed the Pyrenees and then on to Bologna.

Now she was planning to go to Venice, where she wanted to meet a Hebrew sage about whom she’d heard a great deal, then she would travel on to France.

Mondino said that one day he wanted to visit the School of Medicine in Montpellier, but he knew that he would find it difficult to make time for such a long trip, at his age and with all the responsibilities tied to his family and profession.

‘Our responsibilities are where we want them to be,’ replied Adia, looking at him keenly. ‘As for your age, I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Don’t make a fool of me, mistress Adia,’ said Mondino, somewhat offended that she wanted to take him up on that point. ‘I’m quite aware that I am no longer in the first flush of youth, and—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, please,’ she interrupted him. ‘Can’t you see that for every one of your desires, you immediately find an excuse not to carry it out? Don’t you see that everything depends on you?’

‘No, I don’t, and I would ask you to let it be, so as not to ruin this nice moment with an argument. Let’s just say that perhaps I am simply too weak and lazy to take on the journey to Montpellier.’

‘Weak?’ she laughed. ‘To judge from the way you fought those cut-throats, I would have felt safe with you even without my mastiffs.’

At those words, Mondino felt the blood rise to his face, but he did his best to appear indifferent and said nothing.

Adia looked at him and burst out laughing. ‘You really are funny right now, do you know that? you force yourself to sit there looking as inscrutable as a statue, but you’re not really like that.’

‘You seem to know a great deal about how I am and what I want.’

‘That’s right,’ she answered, with a cheek that Mondino didn’t have the time to find irritating, because of what she added immediately afterwards. She looked him straight in the eye and with her lips slightly apart, she said, ‘And I also know what I want.’

In the headiness that the wine had brought on, Mondino didn’t know how they found themselves in one another’s arms, while their mouths searched eagerly for each other. Murmuring in his ear, Adia told him to carry her into the bedroom and he obeyed immediately, lifting her up in his arms without ceasing to kiss her and feeling vaguely sacrilegious as he crossed the threshold with her in the manner reserved for spouses.